Hero (12 page)

The pizza girl looked up from her paper at Sooz.

"Mind your own fucking business."

My mind drifted over to the door with the League's inner sanctum beyond it. Their secret meeting room, their simulated combat-session gymnasium, their museum of treasures from past adventures, the living quarters of the team. And what would Uberman's room look like? Something modern and architectural, I'm sure. No clutter, but lots of style, a Spartan simplicity so he could wake up and pound out a thousand push-ups and sit-ups before a full day of saving people. Later, he would crash on his platform bed to read a thoughtful and sensitive novel before falling asleep, preferably to some soothing music of my choosing.

And where was Justice? Every time I closed my eyes I'd see him standing with my father, both of them stoic on the platform, neither of them saying a word, just holding up three fingers that became two.

Some other questions began to form in my mind. Like where was Justice when my father, his mentor, was disgraced in the eyes of the world? Where was he when Dad couldn't get work? Where was he the month after Mom disappeared and Dad had to drink himself into a stupor just to pass out for a few hours of sleep at night? What the hell did anyone need a sidekick for if they weren't there for you when the chips were down? Dad had been there for Captain Victory to the very end, even through the depressing nursing home years. It's easy to be there for someone when everything's coming up roses, but how about when someone really needs you?

Suddenly all I could think about was finding this guy and telling him who I really was, and that I needed some answers before I went any further with this whole charade, and if that wasn't something he felt like he could talk about, then he could take his super tryouts and shove them up his—

"Welcome, everyone, welcome!" A warm, booming voice echoed as Uberman glided into the room. I leaned forward on the edge of my seat and smiled. I couldn't wait for him to recognize me.

"We're ready for the first group." He looked down at the clipboard in his hands. "Let's see, Mass Master, Compu-kid, Kung-Fu Karla, and the Human Stain."

Uberman shook their hands and ushered them through the door, which closed automatically behind him. I folded my arms and dropped back into the chair and racked my brain about the things I was going to do to impress them.

CHAPTER EIGHT

"WAKE UP. " Someone nudged me. "Kid, wake up, they're calling in a new group."

"Chemical Kid! Miss Scarlett! Polar Paul . . . !" The receptionist called names off the list. I sat up in my chair and looked beside me at Ruth.

"You got a little something there." She pointed to my chin. I wiped the drool off.

"Mighty Mite! Typhoon Timmy! Vicious Violet! and . . ." Other heroes leaned forward in their seat, in hopes their name would be next on the list. She paused before she read the last name.

"And Thom."

I looked over at Ruth, my eyes wide.

"That's you." She pointed at my name tag with her cigarette.

* * *

Inside I found myself in the fanciest gymnasium I'd ever seen. State-of-the-art equipment, clean geometrical lines, like something you'd see in Architectural Digest. It didn't even smell bad.

A flash of bright metallic light, and Silver Bullet stood before us, stopwatch in hand. He explained that today we'd be going through a series of tests. The League would evaluate us at each stage, and from every heat, they'd select some of us to continue on to the next round. By the end of the tests, he said, they'd make their final decisions about who made the probationary roster. I looked around at the faces of my competition and wondered if everyone else wanted this as bad as I did. And if they were as scared as I was of not getting it.

Silver Bullet continued on for a while about the importance of maintaining perfect physical shape, especially with all the power dampeners out there. "The technology is available to any low-level metahuman brazen enough to call himself a villain these days. You have to be ready to fight all the time, even without your powers."

He explained the first stage was to be a simple test of our physical fitness and lined each of us up at various stations throughout the room.

I wanted to raise my hand and ask him if there was a locker room where I could take off my suit, but he'd already reset the stopwatch, ready to go. My sleeves were wet from wip¬ing my forehead. I used my skinny black new-wave tie instead, and it shone slick with sweat.

Silver Bullet fired a starter pistol in the air, which seemed like a ridiculous thing to do for a tryout, and we all broke into a sprint. For all the gym's high-tech gadgets and haute design, our first station was just a cleaner, newer version of the same obstacle courses I'd been doing in gym since I was a little kid. Hop quickly through some tires, run a few laps, leap over a few hurdles, climb a rope wall, and there you are.

I was so focused on doing my best that I didn't even notice until I got to the rope that I was a full two lengths ahead of everyone else. Granted, Mighty Mite had to move a lot faster with those puny legs, but I was still kicking ass. I looked over my shoulder and saw Vicious Violet kicking the hurdles into the wall instead of leaping over them. I'd already won the heat by that point anyway. Not bad for a first-timer. I caught my breath and watched Silver Bullet scribble some marks on his clipboard. Looks like all those years of basketball and sports might actually pay off after all.

The next station was even more like gym class. All he wanted us to do was bang out as many push-ups, pull-ups, rope-jumps, and sit-ups as we could during the allotted periods of time. Again, I nailed it, beating everyone in every event until we got to the sit-ups, when Silver Bullet asked us to partner up.

"I'm not doing it with him." Miss Scarlett, the pizza delivery girl, pointed at me. Everyone else had paired off, and it left just me and Miss Scarlett, and she wasn't having it.

"You're also being graded," Silver Bullet said, "on teamwork."

Miss Scarlett smiled at him, a cute, flirtatious grin, and he smiled back. Then she grabbed my hand and pulled me aside and whispered, "If you look down my shirt, I'll fry your testicles." Her eyes sizzled when she spoke.

I went first and did more than one hundred sit-ups in a minute, with Miss Scarlett kneeling on the tops of my feet as an anchor. I felt the strain in my abdomen and knew I'd be sore tomorrow. I might be winning these heats, but I'd need to get in better shape if I planned to make the big time. No more mint chocolate-chip after dinner, maybe an additional workout at the rec center each morning before school.

When it came time to switch, Miss Scarlett lay on the ground and tucked her shirttail loosely in her waistband and zipped up her red delivery jacket. As I knelt on her feet, she glanced around the room at her competitors, and I thought for a second that she looked like a nervous little girl who'd always been picked last for kickball. Silver Bullet fired his popgun, and while everyone else cranked out their first twenty or so sit-ups with relative ease and speed, Miss Scarlett took her time, pulling herself up to her knees slowly and gingerly. My knees began to tingle, and she looked at me with flames in her eyes. Suddenly my knees began to burn like they were on fire.

"Ouch!" I pulled away. "You burned me!"

"No, I didn't!"

Silver Bullet sped over to mediate.

"That hurt," I said. "What's your problem!" If she'd been a guy and this had been a basketball court, I would have pushed her back.

"I told you, I didn't do it." She got up in my face. "But I might do it now."

"Okay, easy now, you two." Silver Bullet pushed us apart.

"That's enough teamwork for today."

*  *  *

I was still steaming when I walked in the room for my interview. I saw the judges, various members of the League, cracking up with laughter. Miss Scarlett got up from the interviewee seat, smiled and thanked them for their time, and told them if they thought that last one was funny, then just wait until she told the one about the time she'd had to put out the fire at the Sheraton when they double booked the Shriners and the Star Trek convention on the same weekend. The heroes laughed again and bid her a fond farewell, and I could tell she'd charmed the pants off them. She turned to me and brushed a stray strand of hair out of her face with her middle finger.         
"I left the seat warm for you."

She breezed out of the room, and I sat down and faced Warrior Woman, the Spectrum, and King of the Sea behind the table. They caught their breath and settled down from all the laughter. Warrior Woman, still chuckling, wiped a tear out of the corner of her eye.

"Boy, she's kinda nutty, huh?" I threw it out there, hoping to break the ice. Their smiles evaporated, and they inspected their new candidate.

"How so?" the Spectrum asked.

Uh-oh.

"What is this saying, nutty?" King of the Sea asked the others through his gills.

"It's just an expression, that's all." The interview hadn't even started and I was already treading on thin ice.

Warrior Woman folded her arms across the aegis on her chest and furrowed her brow.

"Maybe we should just get started."

I cleared my throat and folded my hands together on the table. If I'd been at church, it would have looked like I was going to pray. My neck itched like crazy under the wet suit collar.

They shuffled through a stack of folders and searched for my file, and the Spectrum asked the first question.

"What's your power, son?"

I opened my mouth to answer, but then he pulled out a lime-green folder from the bottom of the stack.

"Bingo, I got it. Says here you can turn into sand. . . ."

"Um, no, I think that's someone else."

"You can't turn yourself into different silicon-based forms? A giant slide, for instance? A sandstorm?"

"No, that's not me." I scratched under my collar.

"Are you sure?" the Spectrum asked. He flipped through the stacks, looking for the right file, and knocked some papers onto the floor.

"Pretty sure."

"So you're saying you cannot turn into any shapes with your power," gurgled King of the Sea, a real quick study. "Interesting."

"No, that's not what I do."

Warrior Woman leaned forward and stared me down.

"Then maybe in the interest of time you could tell us what it is you do, hm?"

I thought she was going to swallow me whole at any moment. I scooched my chair back a little, and it made a high-pitched squeak like I was scratching a chalkboard.

"I heal things."

They shared a look.

"What kind of things?" Warrior Woman fired off.

"People mostly. I did save a plant once."

They shared another look.

"A plant?" the Spectrum asked.

I wanted to wipe the sweat off my forehead. Miss Scarlett really had heated up the seat, and I was boiling. But I didn't want them to think I was nervous, so I didn't call any attention to the sweat on my brow. I wanted them to find me self-assured and confident.

"If someone's hurt, I can touch them and my hands get really hot, and that's when it starts."

The Spectrum scribbled some notes on a pad of paper and asked me a question without looking up. "And what happens when you absorb the injury?"

"What do you mean?"

"Where does all the pain go once you're done with the healing?"

I bit my lower lip. I'd never thought about it.

"Can you then teleport, convert your skin to diamond, fire beams of energy from your eyes, things like that?"

I swallowed and wished they'd left a cup of water for me on the table.

"Well, it used to trigger seizures after I was done, I guess."

"Seizures?" They shot each other a look.

"You guess?" Warrior Woman asked.

"Well, I used to. I haven't been getting them lately."

They gave me long looks, and then with serious faces scrib¬bled notes on their pads.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized I really didn't know where all the hurt went when I healed. In fact, I didn't know all that much about my powers at all. What the hell was I doing here?

"One more question." Warrior Woman broke the silence. This was shaping up to be a very short interview, and that couldn't be a good thing. "Why are you here?"

I wanted to stop everything right there and ask to see Justice and talk to him about my father. I wanted to bump into Uberman in the hallway and have him whisk me away to the moon or Mars or somewhere far away, where he could point out different galaxies he'd been to. I looked each one of them in the eye and searched for the right words.

"I don't know exactly how I'm going to make the world better yet, but I know I'm going to try."

After a tense beat, the Spectrum nodded. The others exchanged a look and scribbled more notes. Maybe it was a little on the earnest side, but it was the truth. I think even Warrior Woman gave me a good mark for that one.

Sooz from human resources came out again and passed out another form. She explained that we had to sign one last release form before we were allowed to enter the Simulated Training Arena, known as the S.T.A.

"Even though all interaction will be computer generated," she explained, "if you sustain any injury, holographic or otherwise, we're not liable."

Most of us signed the form and lined up to wait for the door to open. Vicious Violet shredded the form to bits and said

there was no way that she was going to sign her life away. Mighty Mite landed on my shoulder and whispered that Violet was only raising a stink about it because she didn't know how to read or write, couldn't even sign her own name. I had a sudden pang to help, like I did at the center. I could have her working those talons around a pencil and making neat cursive letters in no time. Of course, I wasn't sure how I was going to ask without her trying to eat me.

Polar Pete, a short, pudgy guy who looked like he'd be more at home at chess club than a superhero tryout, was sweating more than I was, and his power was all about cooling off.

"Wh-what do you think they're going to do to us?"